Trotsky sets out why it was false to compare the Canton insurrection with the 1905 Russian Revolution. An evaluation of conditions, in China, in 1927, following the defeats and betrayals indicated that the revolutionary wave was receding, and the Opposition had demonstrated and warned against that, on numerous occasions. But, in 1905, the opposite conditions applied.
“During the whole of 1905, the Russian proletariat rose from one plane to the other, wresting concessions from the enemy, sowing disintegration in its ranks, concentrating around its vanguard ever greater popular masses. The October 1905 strike was an immense victory, having a world historical importance. The Russian proletariat had its own party, which was not subordinated to any bourgeois or petty-bourgeois discipline. The self-esteem, the intransigence, the spirit of offensive of the Party, rose from stage to stage. The Russian proletariat had created soviets in dozens of cities, not on the eve of the revolt but during the process of a strike struggle of the masses. Through these soviets, the Party established contact with the vast masses; it registered their revolutionary spirit; it mobilized them.” (p 162-3)
But, even with propitious conditions, and correct leadership, a victory is not inevitable, because it still depends on the balance of class forces, and, in particular, the ability of the ruling class to mobilise the state against the revolution. The ruling class is not the ruling class for nothing, and does not simply disappear from the stage without a fight, and the power of the state gives it tremendous advantages. The existing laws, police and courts often prove enough, but, when not, it has the power of the army. The difference between 1905 and 1917 was the ability of the Bolsheviks, in 1917, to split the army and navy, and bring revolutionary sections of them over to the revolution.
The ruling class also has long experience in keeping itself in power, and so knowing how, and for how long, to utilise the façade of the existing political institutions, and when to discard that façade and move to the use of the military, paramilitary forces and coups. In 1905, the Tsarist regime seeing the balance of forces moving against it, launched the counter-revolution, utilising these elements of the state, and its periphery, much as Thatcher did in putting soldiers in police uniforms, introducing martial law without legislation, and so on, across the coalfields, and resorting to old style cavalry charges, such as at the Battle of Orgreave.
“Under these conditions, the leadership could and should have staked everything so as to be able to test by deeds the state of mind of the last decisive factor: the army. This was the meaning of the insurrection of December 1905.” (p 163)
In 1905, as in 1985, the entrenched power of the ruling class, and the bodies of armed men of its state, proved too cohesive and strong.
The events, in China, in 1927, were completely different.
“The Stalinist policy of the Chinese Communist Party consisted of a series of capitulations before the bourgeoisie, accustoming the workers to support patiently the yoke of the Guomindang.” (p 163)
The Stalinists discredited Marxism by their actions and strengthened Chiang Kai Shek and the bourgeoisie, much as with the social imperialists and the Ukraine-Russia War, “it converted itself into an auxiliary instrument of the bourgeois leadership.” (p 163)
Rather than a rising revolutionary wave, and increasing confidence in the political leaders, the Stalinists caused one defeat, one betrayal after another, and a total loss of confidence in the political leadership, culminating in its adventurist calling for the Canton insurrection.
“The Communists entered the Wuhan government, which repressed the strike struggle and the peasants’ uprisings. They thus prepared a new and still crueller devastation of the revolutionary masses.” (p 163-4)
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